LA Love: Signal Hill

I have an irrational fear of flying -- I don't know why or how it started, but I'm always looking for new music to soothe me for those 5 or 6-hour cross-country flights.

Back in January, I flew to Austin to visit some old college friends, and on the way there I listened to Signal Hill. Signal Hill are a 4-piece band from LA who write awesome instrumental compositions with just the basics of indie rock music - guitar, bass, keys, drums. It's like those times when you're in the rehearsal space with your band, and you start playing all these cool melodies and riffing on everything, and everyone's getting psyched, and then someone's like, "well that's great, but who wants to write the lyrics?" Except these guys don't get to that last part, and it's still really, really good.

On the aforementioned flight to Austin I listened to their song "Llangollen," and the guitar melody was so hypnotic and trance-inducing that it calmed me down for a good 5 minutes and 56 seconds, and I listened to it again on the way back to LA. I imagine this music would also be great for driving at night (maybe not long distances though, because you might get so sucked into the tunes that you end up running off the road into a ditch somewhere....just FML material waiting to happen).

I also recently ran across their song "California Is Too Long," which is a song in 2 parts -- one slower and one faster -- broken up by a short dialogue interlude that sounds like two guys talking in a busy train station. Think Photo Album or We Have The Facts- era Death Cab, or Christie Front Drive, or The Album Leaf. Signal Hill is having an album release party this Saturday, June 6 at Pehrspace in LA, for their new record More After We're Gone -- you can purchase the digital download here.

"Llangollen" - [mp3]

"California Is Too Long" - [mp3]

"Men Before Them" - [mp3]